Icons of my youth are dropping like flies -- first Farrah Fawcett, now Michael Jackson.
Scenes of my life are associated with Michael Jackson's music. The Jackson Five was playing the night I went to my first boy/girl party. I remember sitting in a dark corner of the room, watching them dance and listening to Michael Jackson sing.
When Thriller was released, I was sharing an apartment in Jackson, Mississippi, with my friend Elizabeth (who now lives in Detroit). I played Thriller over and over during that year. It was such an exciting sound.
I was listening to the radio coming in to the office, and a DJ said that we will always remember where we were when we heard Michael Jackson was dead, just like we remember Elvis and JFK. So please tell me in the comments section where you were.
Here's mine:
JFK: I was coming out of elementary school in Natchez, Mississippi, and my mother told me when she picked me up. I was way too young to grasp what that meant.
Elvis: I was sitting in a rocking chair watching TV when the program was interrupted with the news Elvis was dead. As I was in Mississippi, this was a major news story.
Michael Jackson: I was lurching into the kitchen to find some coffee to help me wake up when my son told me the news. I was shocked.
I thought I'd put up a YouTube video of one of Jackson's songs for you to listen to today. But which one? I turned on my phone when I got to my desk and saw there was a text message from my husband. I'd called him last night to see if he could pick me up at Reading station when my train came in after rehearsals but hadn't seen his reply. This was what he wrote:
I'll be there
So I knew which song to put up:
14 comments:
We were in Leicester Square last night, and some girl was screaming loudly into her mobile about Jackson dying, and we were verbally skeptical, thinking perhaps she'd been overserved, but then someone behind us chimed in that he had just heard it on the news.
I didn't hear that Farrah Fawcett died, tho. She had cancer didn't she? Something with high fatality like pancreatic?
That is definitely something you'll remember, hearing the news in such a public way.
Farah Fawcett had cancer of the anus. She had chemo but then refused the operation to remove the tumor because she'd have to have a colostomy bag -- that's what I read anyway. She went to Germany to have some sort of alternative treatment instead. She thought it was all fine after that, but it wasn't. Poor thing. I'm sure she would have taken the colostomy bag option if she'd realized how it was going to turn out.
The tasteless Michael Jackson jokes are already being told at the office. Here's one:
Q: Why does Michael Jackson want to come back as a plastic bag in his next life?
A: So he can still be a threat to children.
Listen to Michael Jackson songs all day here:
Michael Jackson free songs
I was walking into Tesco this morning to buy breakfast and lunch and saw hundreds of Daily Mirrors with "Jacko Dead!" across them.
That was quite an abrupt way to find out.
I left my answers on your Facebook site where you posed the same survey.
About poor Farrah---I watched that documentary about her disease/treatment process and do you know, it was excellent? Very, very well-done, and I thought it was brave of her to expose herself looking flat-out awful. Imagine cameras rolling when you feel that bad?
I honor her decision about rejecting the colostomy. These treatments are options, not mandates, and not everyone wants to live to be 90 at any cost. Many people with very poor prognoses even reject chemo, because often the chemicals make one feel worse than the disease itself.
No one should be criticized for making whatever decision they feel best about, re: treatment.
She was a devout Catholic---something I did not know before the TV program. Not that this fact had anything to do with the colostomy decision, but...interesting to me.
at work. don't remember. don't remember. i don't even remember where i was when john lennon died. weird
a) At work -- talking with co-workers about Farrah Fawcett's death earlier in the day
b) I have absolutely no recollection
c) Mr. Paynic, the principal at Rosewood Elementary announced it over the PA while I was in Mrs. Borcher's third grade
A) I was walking past the muted TV last night and saw the printed words on the screen "King of Pop Dead" and I just YAWNED. Lost interest in that fool decades ago---he should have retired after "I'll Be There"! Cute little kid, JOKE of an "adult."
B) I have no memory of the day Elvis died on that potty, at all. That's another one that should have retired...after "Hound Dog" maybe...although he was rather a hoot in the old movies like "Clambake." But that fat hawg in the spangly white jumpsuit and aviator shades---ugh.
C) I was in first grade and really excited that we got to skip school the next day! Only a few weeks f formal education and I was ready for a break. Our black-and-white TV stayed on all day, repeating the same stuff. I remember they said over and over, "The President is lying in state in the Rotunda," and I thought that a "rotunda" was a coffin, because that's what he was in, after all."
Farrah was a devout Catholic? But she lived such a wild life -- drugs, alcohol, living in sin w/ Ryan, having baby w/out benefit of marriage, rampaging outside her other BF's house, having a kid who is in and out of rehab his whole life. I guess she would have been even worse w/out her religion?
Ah, the beauty of confession and absolution.
But isn't there some line about 'by their deeds you shall know them?' I'm wondering what it means to be a devout Catholic and act like she did or like Mel Gibson does. Shouldn't your devoutness cause some change to external behavior? Can they act as bad as they want and still be devout? I thought the experience of Jesus was supposed to change you first internally then externally so your light shines to others and draws them to Jesus too.
E, I think that's how it's supposed to work, but then again there is not a shred of evidence that any of it is true. Rather, experience shows that what we see is simply a case of people just being people, hypocritical, ignorant, corrupt, sexually deviant and the rest.
Your Baloney detection kit comes in handy here, "just look at the data".
I was in Natchez, Mississippi, driving down Homochitto Street in front of Dunleith when I heard Elvis was dead.
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